MxMo 32: Guilty Pleasures

Man, 32 already, huh. It seems just yesterday that MxMo was finally old enough to drink–soon, MxMo will be old enough to run for president of the U.S. Ain’t that crazy?

Now, the topic of this month’s installment is …

uh…

Oh, that’s right, guilty pleasures. Sorry if I zoned out on you there for a moment. I had to run to the kitchen to make sure my Jell-O didn’t burn. I’m prepping a test batch of a Halloween-themed, brain-shaped Melon Fusion Jell-O mold, spiked with Sour Apple Pucker and Absolut Sheboygan.

All right, everything’s gelling up just fine, so it’s time to talk dirrrrrrrrty pleasures.

Except. I don’t really have many anymore. Not to be snahby or anything, we just don’t drink that way for the most part these days. The only thing I feel guilty about is that when we have a second drink before dinner, it’s almost always an Old Fashioned. I get creative for round one and lazy for round two.

That’s not to say I don’t have a history of embarrassing drinks. The first drunk that I can recall was at my eldest cousin’s wedding, in Southern Illinois, in–oh– 1982 or so. I was 14 and obviously underage, but the bartender served me at the reception anyway. My first drunk, I shit you not, was on Tom Collinses. Now, I guess that’s not terribly embarrassing, but they weren’t really Collinses as much as they were gin and Sprite.

Actually, I think that’s exactly what they were: gin and Sprite. And at 14, I wasn’t much of a drinker, so three of those in about an hour kinda messed me up. I went back to the hotel room, read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, laughed my ass off, and fell asleep, at which point a million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over me without warning.

I proved myself such a man that weekend that my grandparents started plying me with drinks when we’d go visit them. Ah yes, such a gentleman of leisure I was in my high-school days that I developed a taste for the Fuzzy Navel.

But just because I’m no longer prone to quaffing gin and Sprite while chortling at Marvin’s antics, or sipping a Fuzzy Navel in front of the Rose Bowl parade, doesn’t mean I’m always high-brow when I’m out drinking. When Jen and I were in New York, we went out often with friends, and that normally meant a good dive bar or neighborhood pub. Unless we were in a specialty beer bar, such as D.B.A., I was always happy to go with a humble brew of regional renown.